Robert Pelloni’s Kickstarter for his game “bob’s game” succeeded back in May of 2014. I wrote about it in a post called “bob’s game” Kickstarter succeeds. Since it succeeded, he made a single Kickstarter update a year late rin May of 2015. Of course, I wrote about that too in post titled bob’s game Kickstarted: one year later. Now we finally have another update. You can check out the update on Kickstarter under the name Small update.

The condensed version of his update is that it seemed pretty honest about his troubles. He “set the bar low for the Kickstarter,” but it seems he set it too low. He used the money to get an apartment for eight months but eventually ended up living out of his van for the next six. She pitched the game to invenstors without success. He eventually got another apartment and enrolled in online classes. (It’s unclear if he’s still in school.) He also discussed some issues he had porting “bob’s game.”

It looks like he’s hoping to port the bob’s game puzzle game first to multiple platforms to help give him income to work on “bob’s game” the RPG. (For some context on the name, bob’s game is a puzzle game. It’s a stand-alone game, but it’s also the final game within the RPG “bob’s game.” “bob’s game” is a game about bob’s game.)

bob’s game is a multiplayer puzzle game- but not just any puzzle game, *every* puzzle game! It’s a build-your-own puzzle game with a puzzle game creator where you define all the rules to your own custom game!

More than that, great care has been made to ensure that bob’s game is the *best* version of every puzzle game. I went through every puzzle game forum and wiki I could find and made sure to implement every detail and feature required by tournament level hardcore players. It has wall kicks, floor kicks, spin kicks, T-spins, adjustable timing, powerups, you name it.

The rules of bob’s game change in real time as you play it, morphing from game to game and making every round completely unique. Or you can choose to play just your favorite game type against your friends with fantastic controls, super tight timing, and features and powerups from other games.

bob’s game is completely customizable, allowing the player to create in-depth rulesets to mimic existing puzzle games or create entirely new ones to add to the online library.

Create your own puzzle modes! Invent custom rulesets or challenge your friends to a sequence of all your favorite games. Compete in an online world championship and improve your skills to reach the top of the public leaderboard.

bob’s game is constantly evolving with new theme packs, new rules, and user-designed puzzle packs.

This game is not complete, the Java demo featured in the video is an early alpha “MVP” version and I’d like to add many more features. I am also currently porting it back to C++ from Java so that it runs as smoothly as possible with no garbage collection hiccups and can be ported to any platform.

It will be released and continuously updated for desktop PC both standalone and in browser, and on mobile for Android and iPhone, with the source code available to be ported to any other platform.

I set the bar low for the Kickstarter but I was hoping it would make enough for at least a year or two of development. Unfortunately it barely made the minimum amount, but in my situation I had to take what I could get.

I chose to get an apartment instead of trying to live in a van, thinking I’d be better off with the convenience and hoping that I’d be able to figure out something else in that time. This only gave me an 8 month extension, and I spent most of it still very traumatized and frustrated and I did not find any other solutions.

Once I ran out, I ended up living in my car again for another 6 months until I could find another way to support myself. I tried sending a pitch deck to over 300 investors and even went door to door on Sand Hill Road. I emailed every publisher I could find. I applied for YCombinator and 500 Startups. None of that worked, so I ended up enrolling in online classes and taking out student loans.

So now I’m back in an apartment and I’ve slowly started getting back into development after almost 2 years of sleeping in a car.

I’ve listed both the puzzle game and the RPG on Steam Greenlight, in hopes that I could get on Early Access, which would really be great for my situation since I could possibly make some steady income as I worked on the games.

I’m still moving forward with the games the best I can and I will still fulfill the backer rewards when I am able to do so. I am still living on borrowed time, but I’ll do the best I can with the time that I have.

I’m currently porting the Java puzzle game to C++ so that it runs as smoothly as possible. It will be released and continuously updated for desktop PC both standalone and in browser, and on mobile for Android and iPhone, with the source available to be ported to any other platform.

I am doing this as it is the fastest way that I can possibly gain some reliable income, so that I can work on the RPG without worrying about my situation.​

I am not sure what I’m going to do with the RPG. I rewrote it in Java as an MMO so the game world could be continuously updated on the fly. I was successful at doing that but it is very cumbersome to develop on at this point and it needs to be worked on by a team with funding, not one person with no resources.​

I had gotten caught up in the Silicon Valley hype and thought it would be possible to get investment for a fairly large existing project with a cool online demo. Unfortunately that was not the case. It would probably have helped to have had some traction and numbers, but maybe it’s just too small of a project for big investors to care, or maybe my background is too risky, or maybe it’s just not good enough.

I’m also unhappy with the state of Java, and the client doesn’t run well enough on mobile which I was really hoping for and one of my deciding factors.​ I had anticipated that Java would become more popular because of Android and hence also more supported on the desktop, but because of some security issues and the lawsuit between Google and Oracle it became less popular. I would really like to port it back to C++ but that will take a long time, so for now I will stick with Java. I will probably just scale it back to a single player desktop game and release manual updates, or have a good upgrade function built in.